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John Speidell
John Speidell ( fl. 1600–1634) was an English mathematician. He is known for his early work on the calculation of logarithms. Speidell was a mathematics teacher in London and one of the early followers of the work John Napier had previously done on natural logarithms. In 1619 Speidell published a table entitled "New Logarithmes" in which he calculated the natural logarithms of sines, tangents, and secants. He then diverged from Napier's methods in order to ensure all of the logarithms were positive. A new edition of "New Logarithmes" was published in 1622 and contained an appendix with the natural logarithms of all numbers 1-1000. Along with William Oughtred and Richard Norwood, Speidell helped push toward the abbreviations of trigonometric functions. Speidel published a number of work about mathematics, including ''An Arithmeticall Extraction'' in 1628. His son, Euclid Speidell Euclid Speidell (died 1702) was an English customs official and mathematics teacher known for his wri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floruit
''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicating the time when someone flourished. Etymology and use la, flōruit is the third-person singular perfect active indicative of the Latin verb ', ' "to bloom, flower, or flourish", from the noun ', ', "flower". Broadly, the term is employed in reference to the peak of activity for a person or movement. More specifically, it often is used in genealogy and historical writing when a person's birth or death dates are unknown, but some other evidence exists that indicates when they were alive. For example, if there are wills attested by John Jones in 1204, and 1229, and a record of his marriage in 1197, a record concerning him might be written as "John Jones (fl. 1197–1229)". The term is often used in art history when dating the career ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Napier
John Napier of Merchiston (; 1 February 1550 – 4 April 1617), nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the 8th Laird of Merchiston. His Latinized name was Ioannes Neper. John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms. He also invented the so-called "Napier's bones" and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics. Napier's birthplace, Merchiston Tower in Edinburgh, is now part of the facilities of Edinburgh Napier University. There is a memorial to him at St Cuthbert's at the west side of Edinburgh. Life Napier's father was Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston Castle, and his mother was Janet Bothwell, daughter of the politician and judge Francis Bothwell, and a sister of Adam Bothwell who became the Bishop of Orkney. Archibald Napier was 16 years old when John Napier was born. There are no records of Napier's early education, but many believe that he was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Logarithms
The natural logarithm of a number is its logarithm to the base of the mathematical constant , which is an irrational and transcendental number approximately equal to . The natural logarithm of is generally written as , , or sometimes, if the base is implicit, simply . Parentheses are sometimes added for clarity, giving , , or . This is done particularly when the argument to the logarithm is not a single symbol, so as to prevent ambiguity. The natural logarithm of is the power to which would have to be raised to equal . For example, is , because . The natural logarithm of itself, , is , because , while the natural logarithm of is , since . The natural logarithm can be defined for any positive real number as the area under the curve from to (with the area being negative when ). The simplicity of this definition, which is matched in many other formulas involving the natural logarithm, leads to the term "natural". The definition of the natural logarithm can then b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Oughtred
William Oughtred ( ; 5 March 1574 – 30 June 1660), also Owtred, Uhtred, etc., was an Kingdom of England, English mathematician and Anglican ministry, Anglican clergyman.'Oughtred (William)', in P. Bayle, translated and revised by J.P. Bernard, T. Birch and J. Lockman, ''A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical'', (James Bettenham, for G. Strachan and J. Clarke, London 1734/1739), Vol. VIIIpp. 77-86(Google). After John Napier invented logarithms and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based, Oughtred was the first to use two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division (mathematics), division. He is credited with inventing the Slide rule scale, slide rule in about 1622. He also introduced the "×" multiplication sign, symbol for multiplication and the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions. Clerical life Education The son of Benjamin Oughtred of Eton, Berkshi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Norwood
Richard Norwood (1590? – 1675) was an English mathematician, diver, and surveyor. He has been called "Bermuda’s outstanding genius of the seventeenth century". Life Born about 1590, he was in 1616 sent out by the Somers Isles Company to survey the islands of Bermuda (also known as the Somers Isles), then newly settled. He was later accused of collusion with the governor, and that, after assigning the shares to all the settlers, eight shares of the best land remained over, for the personal advantage of himself and the governor. His map was published in London in 1622. In 1623, Norwood patented lands in Virginia, but it does not appear that he ever went there. He is said to have resided at that date in the Bermudas. He may have made several visits to the islands, but according to his own statements he was, for some years before 1630 and after, up to 1640, resident in London, near Tower Hill, as a teacher of mathematics. He is also credited with founding Bermuda's oldest school, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trigonometric Functions
In mathematics, the trigonometric functions (also called circular functions, angle functions or goniometric functions) are real functions which relate an angle of a right-angled triangle to ratios of two side lengths. They are widely used in all sciences that are related to geometry, such as navigation, solid mechanics, celestial mechanics, geodesy, and many others. They are among the simplest periodic functions, and as such are also widely used for studying periodic phenomena through Fourier analysis. The trigonometric functions most widely used in modern mathematics are the sine, the cosine, and the tangent. Their reciprocals are respectively the cosecant, the secant, and the cotangent, which are less used. Each of these six trigonometric functions has a corresponding inverse function, and an analog among the hyperbolic functions. The oldest definitions of trigonometric functions, related to right-angle triangles, define them only for acute angles. To extend the sine and cos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euclid Speidell
Euclid Speidell (died 1702) was an English customs official and mathematics teacher known for his writing on logarithms. Speidell published revised and expanded versions of texts by his father, John Speidell. He also published a book called ''Logarithmotechnia, or, The making of numbers called logarithms to twenty five places from a geometrical figure'' in 1688. Speidell lived in Angel Alley in the 1680s and 1690s, according to the Survey of London The Survey of London is a research project to produce a comprehensive architectural survey of central London and its suburbs, or the area formerly administered by the London County Council. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Robert Ashbee, an Ar .... from Survey of London ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16th-century Births
The 16th century begins with the Julian year 1501 ( MDI) and ends with either the Julian or the Gregorian year 1600 ( MDC) (depending on the reckoning used; the Gregorian calendar introduced a lapse of 10 days in October 1582). The 16th century is regarded by historians as the century which saw the rise of Western civilization and the Islamic gunpowder empires. The Renaissance in Italy and Europe saw the emergence of important artists, authors and scientists, and led to the foundation of important subjects which include accounting and political science. Copernicus proposed the heliocentric universe, which was met with strong resistance, and Tycho Brahe refuted the theory of celestial spheres through observational measurement of the 1572 appearance of a Milky Way supernova. These events directly challenged the long-held notion of an immutable universe supported by Ptolemy and Aristotle, and led to major revolutions in astronomy and science. Galileo Galilei became a champion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
17th-century Deaths
The 17th century lasted from January 1, 1601 ( MDCI), to December 31, 1700 ( MDCC). It falls into the early modern period of Europe and in that continent (whose impact on the world was increasing) was characterized by the Baroque cultural movement, the latter part of the Spanish Golden Age, the Dutch Golden Age, the French ''Grand Siècle'' dominated by Louis XIV, the Scientific Revolution, the world's first public company and megacorporation known as the Dutch East India Company, and according to some historians, the General Crisis. From the mid-17th century, European politics were increasingly dominated by the Kingdom of France of Louis XIV, where royal power was solidified domestically in the civil war of the Fronde. The semi-feudal territorial French nobility was weakened and subjugated to the power of an absolute monarchy through the reinvention of the Palace of Versailles from a hunting lodge to a gilded prison, in which a greatly expanded royal court could be more easily k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
